Walt Disney's Memo

Joan Rice in an earlier page-boys outfit.

Last week we looked at how Walt Disney set
up Perce Pearce and Fred Leahy to supervise the production of his early live-action
movies in England. Below is an example of Disney’s concentration on the detail in
a memo he sent to them during the pre-production of the Story of Robin Hood and
his Merrie Men (1952):

“The final tests arrived the first part of
the week and we looked at them. I think [Richard] Todd is wonderful, and I feel
he will project a great deal of personality and do a lot for the role.

Joan Rice is beautiful and charming. I
think, however, she will need some help on her dialogue. I thought at times,
she lacked sincerity, although one of her close-ups was very cute. I do not
care much about her costume in the first scenes. It seems that women of that
period always have scarves up around their chins, but I think it does something
to a woman’s face. I’d like to see us avoid it, if possible, or get around it
in some way or other-maybe use it in fewer scenes.

When we see Miss Rice disguised as a page,
this costume seemed bulky and heavy. The blouse or tunic was too long and hung
too far down over her hips-it didn't show enough of her and I thought
distracted from her femininity. I do believe the costume did much to set off
her femininity. I think a slight showing of the hips would help a lot.

Joan Rice wearing the updated page-boys costume.

I liked Elton Hayes as Allan-a-Dale. He has
a good voice with quite an appeal. The last word I had from Larry [Watkin] was
to the effect that he would be sending in a new and complete script very soon.
I have been following his changes and the little thoughts I have are close to “lint-picking”,
which I feel he is smoothing out in his final script, so I won’t bother about
passing on my thoughts until I get his so-called final script...”

This is a fascinating insight into the
pre-production of the Story of Robin Hood and although we do know a little
about the original ideas for the movie, I can’t help wondering what the
original script was like! At the start of this post we see a still from the movie, showing Joan Rice as Maid Marian, in what might be the
page’s costume that Disney mentions - as it was never worn in the film.

Joan Rice with Ken Annakin going over the script.

In
his memo, Walt Disney describes Joan Rice’s difficulties with the dialogue. The
director, Ken Annakin went into great detail in his autobiography about the
problems he had with her; how he had to slavishly go over the script with her
word for word. But it is worth mentioning, I believe, that this was only her
second role in a movie and apart from being rushed through the ‘Rank Charm
School’ a year earlier; my research has shown that she had no experience in
acting beforehand.

3 comments:

We do know that Walt Disney chose Joan Rice himself and although we have heard about her apparent lack of acting experience - a point Clement rightly makes - she was very appealing and fitted the role perfectly. She was also good in His Majesty O'Keefe a little later and at that time as we have said before, she was at the height of her film career - which should have gone on much further than it did. She seems so likeable

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A Blog about a Film and a Legend

"It has always been my hope that our fairy-tale films will result in a desire of viewers to read again the fine, old original tales and enchanting myths on the home bookshelf or school library. Our motion picture productions are designed to augment them, not supplant them." ~ Walt Disney